3 [![Build Status](https://travis-ci.org/ntd/adg.svg?branch=master)](https://travis-ci.org/ntd/adg)
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6 Automatic Drawing Generation is GObject-based library that provides
7 a non-interactive cairo canvas specifically designed for generating
8 technical drawings. It can be viewed as a tool for programmatically
9 representing an abstract model into a layout (2D drafting).
11 If you want to develop an application that needs to show and print
12 drawings where some data change but the overall design is similar,
13 the ADG library can be quite useful. In manufacturing industries
14 this is often the case and an ADG-based application could help to
15 greatly improve the productivity of technical offices.
17 You could reach similar targets using parametric CADs but a custom
18 application provides the following benefits:
21 * quicker and not so bloated as a parametric CAD;
22 * can be easily connected to a database;
23 * an ADG based filter can generate drawing on-fly: this feature
24 could be used in web-based applications.
26 Visit the [ADG web site](http://adg.entidi.com/) for further
33 The project is based on the [GObject](http://www.gtk.org/) library:
34 the ADG canvas is developed in plain C using an object-oriented
35 approach. Applications based on ADG are not expected to be
36 developed in C, though: the basic idea is to have a set of bindings
37 for higher level languages (the garbage-collected ones, above all).
38 An application can then be developed using any specific language
39 available, much in the same way as [GNOME](http://www.gnome.org/)
40 applications are conceived.
42 Lua bindings based on [LGI](http://github.com/pavouk/lgi) are
43 already availables and effectively used upstream to test the APIs.
44 The [adg-lua](http://dev.entidi.com/p/adg-lua/) project provides
45 code examples on how to use them.
47 The mathematical and geometrical algorithms, together with a bunch
48 of other useful functions for manipulating cairo paths, are kept
49 in a separated library called [CPML](http://adg.entidi.com/cpml/)
50 (Cairo Path Manipulation Library). Although actually embedded into
51 the ADG project, this library can be easily splitted on its own,
54 The rendering leverages [cairo](http://cairographics.org/), so the
55 ADG canvas fully shares strong and weak points of that library.
56 Most notably, the availables export formats include PostScript,
57 SVG, PDF, PNG but no CAD specific ones (such as DXF). A complete
58 list can be [browsed online](http://cairographics.org/backends/).
64 The ADG library has the following dependencies:
66 * [cairo](http://cairographics.org/) 1.7.4 or later, required by
68 * [GLib](http://www.gtk.org/) 2.14.0 or later, required by ADG;
69 * [GTK+](http://www.gtk.org/) 3.0.0 or later (or GTK+ 2.12.0 or
70 later for GTK+2 support) to optionally include GTK+ support and
71 build the adg-demo program;
72 * [pango](http://www.pango.org/) 1.18.0 or later (optional)
73 to support a serious engine for rendering text instead of using
74 the cairo "toy" APIs (only the pango-cairo module will be used);
75 * [gtk-doc](http://www.gtk.org/gtk-doc/) 1.12 or later (optional),
76 used to regenerate the API documentation
77 * [GObject introspection](http://live.gnome.org/GObjectIntrospection)
78 0.9.5 or later (optional) to dinamically generate bindings
81 The required packages must be installed prior the ADG building:
82 they should be availables on nearly every decent unix-like system.
84 The ADG is mainly developed on GNU/Linux but its dependecies are
85 known to be cross platform so a porting should be quite easy, if
86 not automatic. Anyway, the cross-compilation of a Windows
87 installer is supported upstream and it is based on the ArchLinux
88 [Fedora mingw port](http://github.com/ntd/aur-fedora-mingw).
94 The ADG build system is based on GNU autotools, the de-facto
95 standard for handling free software projects. The following
96 step-by-step instructions are included only for reference: you are
97 free to install ADG in the way you prefer. Just remember if you
98 are copying and pasting to put the proper package version instead
99 of the 0.6.0 placeholder used in the examples.
101 1. Download the ADG tarball and put it somewhere into your file
102 system (your home directory is a good candidate). You can
103 browse the old releases or get the latest tarball directly
104 from [SourceForge](http://sourceforge.net/projects/adg/files/).
108 wget http://sourceforge.net/projects/adg/files/adg/0.6.0/adg-0.6.0.tar.bz2
110 2. Unpack the tarball:
113 tar xjvf adg-0.6.0.tar.bz2
115 3. Configure the build. You can set different options while
116 configuring: check the output of ./configure --help to get a
117 list of all the available customizations.
123 4. Build the ADG library.
128 5. Once the building has finished, you are able to run the demo
129 program without installing anything. Just try it out by
130 launching the uninstalled executable:
133 demo/adg-demo-uninstalled
135 6. Install the library. You must have root privileges, either
136 by previously logging in as root or by using the sudo command,
137 if you intend to install it system-wide (the default). Anyway
138 you can install to a custom destination where you have write
139 access by explicitely setting the --prefix option in the
146 Further details on the installation are availables in the INSTALL
147 text file distributed within the tarball.